


anocht, beidh muid (tonight, we will)

by werebothstubborn



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alcohol, Homophobia, Irish Language, M/M, a language you will not understand, do not try to google translate any of this, homophobic slur, máirtín is NOT martyn, translations of a language you will not understand
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-26 04:55:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15656193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/werebothstubborn/pseuds/werebothstubborn
Summary: when phil walks into a dingy bar on the outskirts of galway, he's not sure what to expect - least of all, a beautiful, irish-speaking fiddle player named dan.





	anocht, beidh muid (tonight, we will)

**Author's Note:**

> hey look, i finished a thing! this was written for the phanfic challenge's language challenge and would have been impossible if it wasn't for [elizajane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xrosepetalsx/pseuds/auroraphilealis) and her magical beta touch. thank you, my love <333

If there’s one thing that Phil Lester is sure of, it’s that Guinness is the worst drink ever invented. And unfortunately for him, there’s a lot of it in this pub because the tourists love it. (Okay, so _maybe_ Phil is also technically, maybe, sort of a tourist as well, but at least he doesn’t see _Guinness_ as the epitome of Irishness.) Every time a pint passes beneath his nose and into the hands of whichever tourist has ordered it, Phil wrinkles his nose a bit. It smells like a pile of dirt that’s had just a little bit of yeast sprinkled on top of it. He’s actually feeling kind of queasy.

This pub he’s in smells like oak and piss, and the rickety wooden stool he’s sat on isn’t doing anything to help his poor, aching arse. Phil is uncomfortable, and all the tourists are ordering Guinness. He should really just leave, he knows that, but for some reason unbeknownst to him, he can’t bring himself to slip off of his stool and walk out the front door.

Phil can’t really pinpoint what it is that drew him here in the first place. The pub is tiny, situated on the corner of two streets with names he can’t pronounce. It’s made of stone that’s been pissed on thousands of times by drunkards who don’t even remember where they are - which would probably explain why it smells like piss in here. The staff is friendly enough, although the bartender gave him a hell of a time for asking for a mixed drink when he’d walked in. If Phil’s being honest, this isn’t the kind of place he usually finds himself gravitating towards. But here he is.

He thinks it probably has something to do with the fiddle player.

To be fair, he hadn’t actually _seen_ the fiddle player before he came in earlier this evening. In fact, the warm brown eyes and rose-gold cheeks on the frontman of the band playing in the corner hadn’t actually had any influence on Phil’s decision to wander in. The fiddle he was playing had, though, had drawn Phil in with the promise of a tune he could tap his foot along to while he drank the night away.

No, the fiddle player was just an added bonus, something pretty for Phil to look at as he listens to pretty music. So, maybe it wasn’t the fiddle player that brought him in here after all, but his instrument and the way he played it.

Blindly, he reaches for his glass and takes another sip of his margarita, licking at his lip to catch the bit of salt stuck there from the rim of his glass. His drink is almost gone by now, but he’s been too busy staring at the gorgeous fiddle player from his stool at the bar to notice it’s gradual depletion.

There’s no way he’ll be able to convince the barman to make him another one. Getting him to make Phil a margarita in the first place hadn’t been an easy task. He’d had to promise the bartender, who was already low on tequila, that he’d only drink one and then he’d find something to drink from the tap, so he’s been trying to savour it.

Here he is, though, with only a couple more sips sitting in the bottom of his glass. With a sigh, he downs the rest of his drink. Maybe if he chooses a cider from the tap and finishes it quick enough, he won’t have to think about how bad it tastes. Phil prefers his drinks made with ninety percent more sugar.

The music is loud. Not so loud that he can’t hear the buzz of conversation around him or hear himself think, but he can feel it thrumming in his veins, drawing a rhythm out of him he never knew he had. His foot taps softly against the bar on the underside of his bar stool, and his shoulders sway from side to side without his consent. This is the kind of music Phil thinks he might find on a soundtrack about him falling in love.

Phil really needs another drink. He needs one, but the fiddle player with the big brown eyes is still on stage, and those eyes seem to have found Phil’s, and he’s set down his instrument to sing some lyrics that Phil can’t understand from a song he’s never heard, and Phil can’t bring himself to look away.

_O gairim gairim é,_

_Agus gairim é, mo stór;_

_Míle grá le m'anam é_

_'Sé_ _Pádraig_ _Leitir Móir!_

There’s a roar from a small group of people sitting closer to the stage, and Phil can’t decide if it’s friendly or not. The fiddle player doesn’t seem to care either way. He picks up his instrument and begins to play again, closing his eyes as the rhythm picks up in the next verse.

Phil closes his eyes, letting the sounds of the fiddle and its player’s husky voice sweep over him. Except for the particularly rowdy group of people sitting up near this stage, it’s  actually quite soothing. If it weren’t for the way his nerves catch fire every time the fiddle player’s eyes land on him, Phil thinks he could probably fall asleep to the music alone.

There’s a crescendo as the song comes to an end, and Phil’s eyes fly open. The fiddle player is looking right at him with dimples carved into round cheeks and a sheen of sweat spread over his forehead.

“Bhí sin Pádraig Leitir Móir.” The fiddle player speaks into the microphone, his voice low and rumbling, washing over Phil like warm rain in a thunderstorm. He’s still not entirely sure what’s being said, but that doesn’t keep Phil from wanting to hear this voice as much as he possibly can.

There’s a shout from up near the stage, and Phil feels his muscles tense up. He hates when people yell.

“Peigín Leitir Móir is ainm do do an amhrán. Cén fáth a bhfuil tú a rá ‘Pádraig’?”

Phil doesn’t have to understand the language to know that whoever these people are, they’re currently heckling the fiddle player. Bile rises in his throat. He wishes he knew _what_ they were saying so he could tell them to fuck off in their own language, but he doesn’t know, so he settles for glaring instead.

The fiddle player’s face flushes, and he sets his instrument down roughly onto its stand before turning to glare at whoever’s heckling him right now. “Tá mé aerach. Má a bhíonn mé ag iarraidh Peigín go dtí Pádraig a athrú, beidh mé. Focáil leat. Ní bheidh aon duine eile sásta a fhocáil leat.”

Phil can’t quite see exactly what’s going on, but there’s another roar from the crowd, and he feels his heart skipping rope in his chest. He wishes he could run up there and put a stop to whatever this is.

One of the people up front yells, “A Deaglan, an bhfuil tú ag ligean cigirí anseo anois?”

The fiddle player swipes his hand over his forehead and combs his hair back. “Dia ár sábháil. Tá deoch uaim.”

The bartender, who’s stopped in front of Phil to watch, unimpressed, as the scene unfolds before them, scoffs. “A Máirtín, faigh thairis nó imigh.” He rolls his eyes as he spins back around to wipe down the bar with an old rag, and Phil thinks somewhere in the back of his mind that if heroes wore aprons and yielded dirty rags, this barman would be one of the greatest heroes in Galway.

With a sigh, Phil casts a glance to his empty glass. Now he _really_ needs another drink. The band members are slowly making their way down from the short platform they’ve been stationed on for the past forty-five minutes or so, but Phil’s already lost track of the fiddle player. Actually, it’s not even until now that the fiddle player is out of site and the other musicians are making their way off the stage that Phil even acknowledges their presence.

 _Fuck_ , that makes him seem like an asshole. It’s not like he’s had no idea they’ve been here this entire time. He’s heard them playing, listened to the bellows of the accordion and the strums of the acoustic guitar. But he hasn’t really _seen_ them, not really. Not when the whole room is lit up by chocolate curls framing hazelnut eyes. Not when the fiddle player is so breathtakingly beautiful.

The rest of the band, Phil decides here and now, is also beautiful; although he’s not sure that anyone could hold a candle to this complete stranger who seems to have swept away with his heart without a single interaction. God, he wishes he could lay his eyes on that face again. Drink, he needs another drink.

Phil swivels back around to get the bartender's attention, only for his knee to clack against the knee of some other person sat _right next to_ him.

Why is there someone sat right next to him? There are plenty of open seats along the bar. Even more important: How did he not notice someone sitting down and ordering something directly beside him?

The new figure doesn't even look up from where he's staring moodily into his pint of lager, but Phil still feels a swoop low in his stomach. He's not drunk enough for a conversation yet, but he also doesn't want to be rude and leave his accidental assault unacknowledged.

Taking a deep breath, he turns to face the man on the stool next to him. _Right_ next to him. "Sorry," Phil murmurs softly. "I didn't see you there."

The man doesn't turn his head, not fully, but his eyes slide sideways to look at Phil, and Phil's breath catches in his throat. They're big and brown and warm and set deeply into the cherubic face of the fiddle player from the band, and Phil reckons he'd really like to stare into them for a while if he could. No, scratch that, Phil reckons he’d really like to stare into them for the rest of his life if he could.

All too quickly, they're gone again, and the man just lets out a gruff grunt before knocking back the rest of his lager and waving the bartender over their way.

The barman gives them a tight smile. "What can I get for ye, lads?"

"An feidir liom lager eile agus pionta Guinness do mo chara anseo?"

Phil's barmate has a softer voice than he expected. It had been low and husky onstage, but the fiddle player had been speaking into a microphone then. This, though, this is completely natural, free from the speakers that warp it until it’s no longer soft and sweet. It’s smooth like satin, and Phil wishes he could listen to it play over and over again like a record.

Phil blinks stupidly, not even registering the twenty euros the fiddle player's sliding over to the barman or even that the barman is _turning away_ before Phil can even place his drink order. How can anyone speak so softly? Granted, Phil has no idea what he actually _said_ ; he could have been cussing Phil out for all he knows, but at least the man sounded good while doing it.

It's probably a bit creepy, Phil knows that, but he can't bring himself to look away from the stranger beside him.

His hair is tousled from all of the tugging he’d given it at the end of the first part of their set. It’s been pushed back up off of his shiny forehead, but the body heat in this room is so overwhelming that it’s already started to flop forward to cover his eyes again. His skin is lightly golden, cheeks turned slightly pink from the warmth in the room, and Phil wishes that this rose-gold beauty would turn to look at him again.

When a glass thunks onto the bar in front of him, Phil startles, shifting his gaze to look anywhere but where it's been focused for the past few minutes. It settles on a tall glass of some dark, thick-looking liquid.

Phil looks up at the bartender. "Erm, sorry," he says slowly, "but I didn't order anything yet."

The bartender nods to the beautiful specimen who is somehow sitting beside Phil. "Your man's getting this round."

Phil frowns, glancing over to the fiddle player beside him again. He certainly isn't "Phil's man," although that doesn't necessarily sound unappealing. Actually it sounds quite appealing, but no one else needs to know that. If nothing else, Phil can just pretend for tonight just to keep any awkward conversations with the barman away. He lets his eyes rest on the pint in front of him again, glaring at it suspiciously.

The barman sighs. "I've had my eyes on it the whole time. He hasn't slipped anything in there, and it's all yours. For free. I'd take it if I were you."

Phil picks it up warily and sniffs it. He vaguely remembers the man beside him saying "Guinness" when he spoke to the bartender a few minutes ago, but he'd just assumed that the man had been ordering one for himself. This drink in front of him, though, it looks a lot like Guinness. Phil hates Guinness.

He swallows down the lump in his throat, but lifts the pint to his lips anyways and takes a big gulp of it, trying to swallow it all before it can leave any lingering taste on his tongue. It doesn't work. The drink somehow still manages to taste exactly as it smells - like yeast and dirt and piss, but Phil can't bring himself to put it down politely. Instead, he does the only rational thing he can do in this situation. He takes a few more gulps, trying to empty his glass as quickly as possible, squeezing his eyes shut and wrinkling his nose all the while.

The soft voice from the man next to Phil returns a moment later, making him jump. He sets down his glass.

"Mise Dan," the man says, and Phil's mouth forms a small "o". Dan sounds like a name. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's _this_ man's name, but it would make more sense than anything else. It's not likely his neighbor would be trying to introduce Phil to the bartender.

Phil turns to look at Dan, whose eyes are still fixed on the drink in front of him, but whose lips have turned up slightly at the corners. "Phil," he says, as way of introducing himself.

"A Phil, ól liom." Dan picks up his glass and turns to look at Phil head-on for the first time tonight. He raises the pint, and even though Phil’s not entirely sure what Dan just said, the message is clear enough. He casts his own pint a brief, disdainful glance before grabbing it and turning to face Dan again.

Warily, he lifts it up to around the same level as Dan’s and sweeps his hand forward to clink their glasses together.

“Sláinte,” Dan says with a small, dimpled smile.

Phil can’t help but grin back. Without even making a conscious decision, he throws back the rest of his drink and drops the pint back onto the bar.

The fiddle player’s eyes blow wide with surprise, and he slides his hand over to cover Phil’s. “Woah,” he says softly. His thumb brushes gently over Phil’s knuckles. “Moilligh. Tá mé ag iarraidh anocht a chuimhneamh.”

Phil gulps. _God_ , he wishes he were a native speaker because Dan’s eyes are fully on his for the first time tonight, not focused anywhere slightly to the left, not drifting to pass over the entire crowd. They’re just two orbs of molten caramel... _fixed_ on Phil like _he’s_ the most beautiful person in the room, but Phil knows that it’s a farce. No one is as beautiful as the man sat beside him.

Dan slips his hand off of Phil’s, and Phil almost whines, but it doesn’t go far. It’s still right there beside his, close enough for Phil to hook his pinky over Dan’s if he wanted to. He _does_ want to, but he’s not sure he’s brave enough.

Like he’s read Phil’s mind, Dan takes another large gulp of his own drink and then hooks their pinkies together. Phil watches, mesmerised as Dan’s lips start moving. They’re plump and pink and smirking slightly as they form words Phil’s never heard before. “Tá súile álainn agat.”

Phil feels his cheeks catch fire. “I don’t know what you just said, but you have the loveliest lips I’ve ever seen,” he blurts, slamming a hand over his mouth as soon as the words have slipped out. He doesn’t know what came over him. It’s not like he’s had too much to drink - it usually takes a lot more than two to loosen his tongue. Maybe it’s just Dan. Dan and his soft voice and his tousled curls and his soft hands and his plump lips that Phil really wants to cover with his own right now. Everything about him is intoxicating. Phil reckons he probably wouldn’t ever need to drink again if he had Dan around all the time.

“Well, in that case…” Dan speaks in English for the first time tonight, and Phil’s mouth drops open in surprise. It’s not a surprise that Dan speaks English; most people in Ireland, Phil’s found, _do_. What _is_ surprising, however, is the post British accent Dan has in place of an Irish one.

Phil doesn’t have much time to dwell on this, though, because one second he’s lost in his own head, and the next second Dan’s warm mouth is pressing gently into the corner of Phil’s, causing his mind to short-circuit.

Dan pulls away, but only just. “I have to go get ready for the second half, but wait for me? My lovely lips have a few tricks they’d like to show you.” He winks, and Phil can feel his soul leave his body. It’s one of the _worst_ pick-up lines he’s ever heard, but fuck it if he’s not about to fall for it anyway.

Phil opens his mouth, preparing to agree right then and there, but all that comes out is, “You’re English?”

Dan chuckles. “Yeah, I’m actually heading back to London in a few weeks. We’re just playing in a few Galway bars for now. Eoghan’s from here, and he was feeling a little homesick, so we thought _why the hell not_?”

Phil can hear his own heartbeat. He hasn’t actually registered anything that Dan just said besides _I’m heading back to London in a few weeks_ , and he wants to bottle up that sentence and stick it on a shelf. “I’m from London,” he breathes, relishing in the way he makes Dan laugh again. There’s nothing really funny about what he’s said, but maybe Dan’s just the kind of person who finds everything funny. Maybe he’s as drunk off of Phil as Phil is off of him.

“Well then maybe we’ll see each other around there, too.”

Phil’s heart skips a beat, and then the wires in his brain reconnect. “Wait. If you’re English, how do you know how to speak...Gaelic? Is that what that language is?”

Dan beams. “Irish, actually, but you wouldn’t be the first person to not know the difference. My grandma was from Galway originally, actually. She taught me how to speak her native language when I was really young, and it just...stuck, I guess.”

“That’s amazing,” Phil says softly.

“Thank you. Maybe I can teach you sometime.” Dan’s eyes crinkle at the corners. There’s a shout from the stage, someone calling his name, and he swings around to look at them. For the first time, Phil notices a small patch of skin on Dan’s jaw that’s a bit redder than the rest of his face. He wishes they had more time right now, time for him to brush his thumb over that spot on Dan’s jaw, to press his lips to it, but he can already see the resigned look on Dan’s face that says he has to get back onstage.

Phil’s heart aches for that look, but he smiles in spite of it. “I’ll still be here when the show’s over. Maybe then you can show me your nifty lip tricks.” That is by far the worst sentence Phil’s ever said in his life, but Dan doesn’t seem to mind at all. In fact, he looks rather pleased by it.

“I’d like that,” Dan says softly, lifting Phil’s hand up to brush his lips over Phil’s knuckles. “I’d like that a lot.”

 

* * *

 

_“O gairim gairim é,_

_Agus gairim é, mo stór;_

_Míle grá le m'anam é_

_'Sé_ _Pádraig_ _Leitir Móir!”_

_"O welcome and acclaimed_

_is he, my love!_

_Dear to my soul, a thousand told,_

_is Patrick Lettermore."_

“Bhí sin Pádraig Leitir Móir.” - “That was Patrick Lettermore.”

“Peigín Leitir Móir is ainm do do an amhrán. Cén fáth a bhfuil tú a rá ‘Pádraig’?” - “The song is calle Peggy Lettermore. Why are you saying ‘Patrick’?”

“Tá mé aerach. Má a bhíonn mé ag iarraidh Peigín go dtí Pádraig a athrú, beidh mé. Focáil leat.” - “I’m gay. If I want to change Peggy to Patrick, I will. Go fuck yourself. No one else will fuck you.”

“A Deaglan, an bhfuil tú ag ligean cigirí anseo anois?” - “Declan, you’re letting f*gs here now?”

“Dia ár sábháil. Tá deoch uaim.” - “Fucking hell. I need a drink.”

“A Máirtín, faigh thairis nó imigh.” - “Martin, get over it or get out.”

"An feidir liom lager eile agus pionta Guinness do mo chara anseo?" - “Can I have another lager and a pint of Guinness for my friend here?”

"Mise Dan." - “My name is Dan.”

"A Phil, ól liom." - “Phil, drink with me.”

“Sláinte.” - “Cheers.”

“Moilligh. Tá mé ag iarraidh anocht a chuimhneamh.” - “Slow down. I want you to remember tonight.”

“Tá súile álainn agat.” - “You have beautiful eyes.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading :))
> 
>  
> 
> like and reblog on ao3


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